


Takahoa

by xTooxLazyxToxLogxInx



Category: Moana (2016)
Genre: Angst, First Work I've done, Fluff, Gen, Little bit of angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-01
Updated: 2016-12-04
Packaged: 2018-09-03 11:36:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8711080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xTooxLazyxToxLogxInx/pseuds/xTooxLazyxToxLogxInx
Summary: Takahoa(noun) Companion; one with whom one spends time or keeps company.(verb) To befriend, to become closer.Moana and Maui after everything is said and done.





	1. After The End

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, I made a fanfic. I dont even know how to write but thanks to my wonderful beta @Queen_Kitty_21 this came out comprehensible. Hope y'all like it and if you see anything that doesn't seem right or any constructive criticism to be had don't be shy and gimme a comment.  
> Hope y'all enjoy!!

When Moana finally made it back to the island after her first journey outside the reef, Maui was not with her. About halfway through the trip back home, he had parted ways, saying that he had long neglected demi-godly duties to attend to. While she sailed the open ocean alone, she could have sworn that she had caught a glimpse of a massive seahawk soaring overhead but when she tried to get a better look it was nowhere to be found.

Her safe arrival was celebrated with food and dancing. Her father and mother stayed by her side during the entirety of the festivities. Food was being passed around and the smell of cooking coconut and _poi_ was comforting after the weeks she had spent at sea with Maui. When the fire began to die down and the moon was overhead, attention was turned to her adventure. The villagers around her began firing off questions about where she went, if she got stranded, how’d she learn to sail, what did she eat, how far did she go, did she see any monsters? And so she told them the tale of stranded demi gods and learning to wayfind, of _kakamora_ pirates on ships as big as islands, of coconut crabs covered in gold, and of restoring Te Fiti to her former glory and saving the world from the encroaching darkness her grandmother had warned them of. Some of the older villagers were disbelieving of her story, saying that she was still a child and the gods would not ask a land bound girl to restore the safety of creation.

When the villagers voiced their doubts, however, a voice of a child came from the shore, “Moana! Somebody is messing with your boat!” Confusion fell over the crowd; nobody was missing so who could it be? The village all went and looked down the slope to peer at the shoreline where her boat was tethered. And there stood a hulking figure who was standing on Moana’s boat, carrying her sail and desperately trying to shush the child that had alerted the village. As soon as Moana saw the figure she has ran down the steep slope much to the dismay of the villagers that she would run towards an unknown being that was taking apart her canoe. Even more surprising to the villagers however, was that as soon as she came close to him, his head shot up and he dropped her sail and welcomed her hug that came more in the form of a flying tackle.

The village rushed down to the edge of the forest just feet away from their future chief and the unknown man, for now they could she that the massive being was simply a tall, muscular man who was covered in tattoos and wearing only a roughly made palm frond skirt and a necklace adorned with various teeth; over all he made a very imposing figure. Moana was fiercely hugging the man who had to be at least twice her size and much to the amazement of many of the people observing, she grabbed his ear and yanked on it.

The man nearly dropped her. “Ow! What was that for!? I haven’t done anything yet!”

“You left me out on the ocean alone with a suicidal rooster and barely a clue which direction my island was! And don't think i didn't see you following me! ‘Demi-godly duties’ my ass, you are just super awkward when we aren't in life threatening danger!” She punctuated each sentence with a pull on his ear. When she finished her tirade he pulled her away from him and held her out at arm's length to prevent anymore abuse of his ear.

“Are you done?” He groaned wearily.

She launched herself at him again and squeezed him again and just said, “I missed you.”

At this point Chief Tui left the crowd of villagers and tentatively spoke, “Moana? Who is this?”

“Oh!” She dropped from her embrace, “This is Maui! You know, the one from grandma’s stories? Shapeshifter and everything? This is him.” Maui waved at the village enthusiastically. The villagers began to murmur about the demigod.

A small voice cut through the crowd, “Isn’t he the one who killed Te Fiti?”

Maui flinched and froze. During one of their conversations after they restored Te Fiti she had explained that while, yes, she had heard stories of his exploits of creating the world as she knows it, he was generally regarded as the bad guy in many of the stories they told the children; they were told he had selfishly stolen Te Fiti’s heart to have the power of creation for himself without regard for the consequences.

“Kai, remember the story I told all of you? About me restoring Te Fiti? Maui is the one who helped me do it. He saved me and he saved the whole world too!” Moana was speaking to the young child that had spoken out. Maui looked around and saw the villagers were all watching him with curiosity and caution.

Maui was used to being regarded with awe; he just didn't know what to do without all the worship he had been given prior to stealing Te Fiti's heart. He regretted stealing that stupid thing, it had brought him nothing but pain. He had been stranded on an island for centuries without a way off. He had never even thought of himself as a villain but he had become one along the way somewhere. He could see it in each of the villagers' faces; they felt as if he were a threat. It felt wrong.

Maui clasped his hand around Moana’s shoulder and, in an attempt to move on, said, “I can smell _lau lau_ and I’m pretty hungry, why don’t we go eat.”

Maui followed the village up to the large area where they had been celebrating before. He was served poi and _lau lau_ as well as coconut and pineapple. He sat beside Moana and devoured his plate and watched the fire and listened to Moana speak to her people and play with Hei-Hei and a small pig. Children ran back and forth and people continued to eat and dance. It was nice, he could see why Moana loved it so much. There was a certain warmth to the way the village lived. Children would run by and try to jump on each other like he saw puppies do. There was just so much joy in the simple lives these people led. Village life seemed so peaceful and easy he sometimes wished he had had some opportunity to experience it himself as a member of it, not as a demigod to be worshipped. Maui had never experienced village life, had never had a home like the people of Motunui did. He never even got the love that was so easily displayed between family members. The gods didn’t desire or value love and kinship like humans did; they wanted worship and respect. Maui, no matter his demigod status, was ultimately of human descent and desired love, but it couldn’t be given to him by the gods and he had no human family. So he endeavored to earn the people’s love by giving them whatever they needed. The needed space so he raised the sky, they were cold so he delivered fire to their villages, they needed to sail so he gave them the wind to carry them across oceans, they needed time so he lengthened the day. All he did was to serve the people of his ocean and earn their admiration, but his mistake of trying to give them power over life had destroyed that.

Before he could get too deep in his mind however, a small hand touched his arm. When he looked up Moana was there and she looked tired. “The fire is about to go out, the village will be going to sleep. Do you know where you’re going to stay?” Maui hadn’t even noticed that the children had stopped playing, choosing instead to lie down with their parents and sleep, and the fire was nearly out.

He got up and stretched, his spine audibly cracking, “You know me. I can sleep anywhere! I did spend a thousand years on a deserted island after all.”

Moana just looked at him, exhaustion painting her features, “Okay, whatever you say Maui.” She began towards her _fale_ and Maui followed behind her. It was obvious she was very tired because about halfway down the slope, she nearly slipped down off the edge of the path, Maui caught her and scooped her up, she didn’t even protest before she had fallen asleep. Maui carried her the rest of the way and when he saw the _fale_ toward the end of the path, the chief was outside. When Chief Tui saw Maui carrying Moana over to the house he tensed but then he noticed that the demigod was holding her very carefully and Moana was breathing deeply.

“She fell asleep?” Chief Tui whispered.

“Yeah, she nearly fell off the path before I caught her and before I knew it she was out like a light.” Maui replied quietly, trying carefully not to wake her before ducking into the _fale_. He gently laid her down on her bed roll. As soon as she was settled he exited the _fale_ and began to wander towards the edge of the water.


	2. Life Goes On

When Moana woke up, it was midmorning. She rose and went out towards the sea. When she got there, she was not far from her canoe. She went over to it intending to sit on the deck and admire the ocean around her but as she approached something caught her eye. The sail had been changed.

She rushed over to examine the new sail. It was very similar to her old one but the spiral which had been a faded red was now a beautiful green similar to the color of Te Fiti’s heart. At first she assumed somebody must have redyed the sail but her stitching from after the first battle with Te Ka, which had remained after Te Fiti had returned her canoe to her, was missing. She saw the compartment for supplies was open and when she looked inside, her first sail was folded neatly and stored away.

She carefully closed the compartment and got off her canoe. She noticed as she got off that the bow had designs that had been carefully carved with great precision that must have taken hours. The beautiful carvings depicted dolphins and whales with the dolphins appearing to be leaping out of the water and the whales breaching. Nobody on the island could carve like this and not one would dare to carve on her boat without asking.The only person who would even consider touching the chief’s daughter’s boat would be Maui. Of course the demigod would decorate her boat without asking, but the question was why would he? She decided to ask him herself and since he wasn’t on the shore with her intending to receive praise for his effort, he must be up in the village.

When she went to the village, which was only just beginning to start the day, she didn’t immediately see him. Children were walking with their parents to pick taro and grind it to make poi. Chickens were wandering the village grounds and there were young men chopping coconuts to the beat of Papa Toa’s ax. The village was coming to life, villagers greeted her and children brought her small flowers for her hair. All was as it normally would be in the waking hours of Motunui; but surprisingly, Maui was nowhere to be seen. She figured it would be easy to spot him given that he was much larger than anyone in her village except maybe her own father, and some of the men who chopped coconuts. Maybe the men had seen him or knew where he was? Moana decided to ask some of the men already working.

Moana walked up to one of the men chopping coconuts, “Do you know where Maui is?”

“Sorry I haven’t seen him.” The man replied, returning to his task. Moana continued her walk about the village, asking a few women who were weaving baskets from the reeds and others who were pounding kapa cloth, but nobody had seen him. The closest she got to finding him was when her mother told her that she had seen him by the shore at dawn.

Maui was not at the shore, nor was he in the village or the forest. She searched the entire island for him but it was as if he had simply vanished. There was no trace that he had even been on Motunui at all. She knew every inch of her home; he was not there. He had left.

* * *

 

The next day Moana began to teach her people how to sail. Wayfinding was a complex art and it took the villagers a long while to even accept the idea that they could or would leave their island and voyage beyond the reef. She figured that the cove of all the ocean-faring ships would be a great way to introduce them to the art of wayfinding. She took them down to the hidden cove and began to teach the very same lessons Maui had after the kakamora incident. Moana threw herself into teaching her people the art of sea travel that had been lost for centuries.

Everyday the villagers would come down to the cove around midday and begin to learn about sailing the open ocean. Many were fishermen and young men learning to be fishermen but still many of the techniques needed to travel by sea were unfamiliar. Moana watched the men try to prep boats for sea travel and realized, she needed to reteach them to sail altogether if they were to sail the open sea. Their knots were all wrong for what they needed to accomplish, they couldn’t properly tie knots to keep the sails. They were too used to the easy waters immediately around the island.

It took months to teach the men to sail the ocean as opposed to the coast. At one point young women joined her class and, much to the dismay of the fishers, began to advance much quicker. At the end of her teachings, the best voyagers and wayfinders were mostly women. Moana now had near to a dozen wayfinders to teach some practical experience. She organized a short expedition towards a nearby island she had passed on her journey home. Her small fleet prepared to leave, each two to a canoe except Moana who took her own boat on her own. The trip would take about a week both ways and would make it easy to learn to travel some distance and difficult to get lost while doing it. The experience would be useful when they began voyaging again.

The short trip went well. There were no mishaps other than one of the boats getting overturned during some rough weather which was easily fixed. The island they visited was smaller than Motunui with less mountains but was ripe with fruits and it had a small cove just large enough to fit their boats and was full of fish. Her tiny fleet spent a couple days gathering provisions from the island to bring back to Motunui. They harvested coconuts and fished, smoking and drying the fish into jerky to eat on the way back home.

They journey home was uneventful. When they arrived, the village was excited to hear of their first voyage in centuries, even if it wasn’t far. Children wanted to sail and gobbled up the stories of the new island with fervor. Even the adults and elders were captivated by the tales of their adventure. The long absence of voyages made the people of Motunui yearn for tales of adventures that their own people had been on. It was amazing to see the thirst for adventure back into the people of Motunui.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the short chapter but theres plenty on the way!!!


End file.
